


Ashes

by Spragg



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Nux Lives, Please Forgive me, Post-Mad Max: Fury Road
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-15
Updated: 2016-02-15
Packaged: 2018-05-20 21:42:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6026121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spragg/pseuds/Spragg
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What does it mean to ride eternal? For Nux it means malady. Nux the diseased, Nux the plague horse. He is a rotting carcass, stretched out on the bunk until the end of days. He is the pest that remains in the ashes even when the fire has devoured everything else. </p><p>You can crawl through the dust begging for forgiveness all you want. The dead remain where they lie. The past is what it is. How horrible it is to learn that sickness of the body is kinder than sickness of the soul. But you learn. My god do you learn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ashes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Selkie_de_Suzie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Selkie_de_Suzie/gifts).



> AU in which Nux didn't die in the crash at the end of Fury Road. 
> 
> This is for Selkie_de_Suzie, the amazing author of "Sutures Fine and Fragile", the work that left me so inspired with its calm desperation and clever repetitions that I had to write this fic. Go witness her marvelous writing at:  
> http://archiveofourown.org/works/5943019/chapters/13665010
> 
> "Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn."  
> C. S Lewis

What does it mean to live, to die, to live again? For Nux it means punishment. Nux the failure, Nux the refused. Three times cast out of Valhalla, three times barred at the gate. When he dares wonder what is left; the answer echoing between the empty halls is always the same: _Nothing_.  
He is the void dripping through the cracks in the rock. He is the darkness lurking in the forgotten corners of the Citadel into which he walks, stumbles, _crawls_ looking for remains, fragments, anything that is left. Eyes wide open, endless scratch marks forming along the stone walls, fingertips bleeding from gnawing them down to the bone.  
_it hurts to remember_

What does it mean to ride eternal? For Nux it means malady. Nux the diseased, Nux the plague horse. He is a rotting carcass, stretched out on the bunk until the end of days. He is the pest that remains in the ashes even when the fire has devoured everything else.  
Larry and Barry are gone. The new regime had medicine and life. But Nux is death. If only the tumours had claimed him. How strange, how droll to think that he was ever afraid of dying soft, but now he knows. Dear god, he knows. The true soft death is not dying at all. 

Every day she comes, the red-head former wife. She feeds him, cleans him and repaints his clay because she knows that he feels exposed without it. Her hands are smooth and untrained, not at all like the calloused and skilled hands that used to paint him. Once, in the beginning, she had asked a pup to do it. He couldn't sleep for three nights afterwards and in his exhausted delirium he had talked to the dead. He does not know who came to set him straight.  
“Nux, they are gone, just listen! Listen to how fucking silent they are!”  
If only. 

What does it mean to take control? For Nux it means loss. Nux the war lord, Nux the destroyer of worlds. The older women say that there is an infinite amount of worlds, but Nux knows the real number: three. There were three worlds and he has vanquished them all.  
Number one: The eternally rolling dunes, the winding hallways. The clear days when you could stretch your arms all the way up into the infinite sky. The painted faces moving through the structure, the banter, the orders, the metallic sounds of repairing a car; clink, clank, _fuck_.  
Number two: Kinship. Team mates, friends, brothers. The sisters call them a death cult, but Nux was alive then. They were the laughter, the fighting, the jokes, the tenderness of a pat on the shoulder. If this realm was not the true breath of life then he doesn't know what is. Now he is only emptiness. A scarred, dry surface stretched over hollow bones.  
Number three: The most diminutive; so small it could fit through a needle's eye and yet somehow so encompassing that it was everything. Its edges so blurred that it was impossible to grasp and still, now when it's gone, Nux' being is defined only by what it has lost. His hands still know all the details, from the hairless head to the metal stitching in the sides to the sleepy whispers. Drowning in recollection he dies again and again, rising doomed and then endlessly falling back into the vivid, scorching pictures of his feverish mind.  
_an arm wrapped around his waist, a hand on his chest pulling him backwards, a pair of gentle lips pressing against his neck._  
_what if anyone is watching?_  
_fuck 'em. let them see that you're mine_

What does it mean to help the wounded? For Nux it means anguish. Nux the traitor, _Nux the murderer_. On the inside of his eyelids is another pair of eyes; red and green. Inside his nightmares lives the rest of the face; its mouth tearing apart the stapled scars and opening up impossibly wide and from that infernal maw spills a deafening howl:  
_treacherous filth!_  
_you_  
_let_  
_me_  
_**burn**_

What does it mean to survive? For Nux it means eternal damnation. Nux the cursed, Nux the undead. Ironically, it is only now when he has been made full-life that he understands what it means to be a ghost. Not like the persistent beings around him with their animate movements and their rosy cheeks, nor like the departed, the ones who are only memories lost in time, shadows moving at the corner of his eye.  
How can the present be less real than what was before?  
How can the past be alive when it is gone?  
Nux walks as dead among the living  
and as living among the dead  
somehow waiting for a balance to come

There is a forgotten ledge at the top of the Citadel and his running feet hit every other step. The stairs go on forever, but he doesn't tire. Not today.  
He laughs as the sun sets, painting the Citadel orange. He laughs when he sprinkles the sand between his fingers just like they used to do. Then silence. His hand reaches up to his heart. Still beating, just like when the other leaned in to listen to its rhythm. Back when they were still alive. It was here, it was always _right here_. 

_but what does it mean?_  
_i don't know pup. i don't care._  
_will you stay with me?_  
_'course. to valhalla and beyond._

And maybe he cries in this moment. Maybe he claws at his chest as if he wanted to tear it apart. Maybe he screams, _howls_ , into the coral skies. But he laughs as the wind hits his face forcefully. Or rather, it is he who hits the wind. Pants rustling, arms outstretched. Maybe he can still grab the sun before it's gone.


End file.
